A New Year’s call to action for the prisoner class: Support the Bay View

by Uhuru Baraka-Rowe

2015 is right around the corner. For those of us locked down behind enemy lines, what will our New Year’s resolution be this time around: Stop smoking? Eat healthier? Exercise more? Here’s an idea: for the entire month of January 2015 let’s donate money to the Bay View.

Censorship-in-Solitary-Confinement-is-Psychological-Torture-111314-by-Michael-D.-Russell-web-194x300, A New Year’s call to action for the prisoner class: Support the Bay View, Abolition Now!
At a time when CDCr is considering regulations that could ban the Bay View from all California prisons, support is critically needed and greatly appreciated. – Art: Michael D. Russell, C-90473, PBSP D7-217, P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City CA 95532

At a time when print publications are quickly becoming obsolete, the print edition of the San Francisco National Black Newspaper is struggling to stay afloat. The Bay View is sent free to hundreds of prisoners across the U.S. via the Prisoner Subscription Fund. [The paper isn’t outright free to people in prison; we provide subscriptions as the PSF is funded, which requires grassroots donations from people like you. – ed.]

As we lounge in our cells reading the Bay View and being transformed by its revolutionary insights, how many of us pause to consider what goes into the production and distribution of each issue of the Bay View: the printing, the people power to edit and transcribe our stories and essays for publishing, the costs associated with postage, rent etc.

Some of us are indigent; others have prison slave jobs or receive money from loved ones, especially during the holiday season. During this upcoming holiday season, including the New Year, instead of spending the bulk of our money at the corporate-owned prison commissary – like Keefe Commissary Network Sales – which price-gouge the hell out of us, let’s donate $5 to the Bay View.

Here’s an idea: for the entire month of January 2015 let’s donate money to the Bay View.

If 500 within the imprisoned class donate $5 to the Bay Area, that’s $2,500. This helps more of our stories and essays get published and printed. That $2,500 can assist in keeping the Bay View coming monthly rather than the quarterly publication schedule other grassroots publications have transitioned to. That $2,500 can also assist the Bay View with other costs we aren’t aware of.

Instead of purchasing a bunch of unhealthy junk food which causes us many illnesses, only purchase a half book of stamps – along with other essential items – and mail them to the Bay View or send a $5 money order or institutional check made payable to the Bay View. This is an opportunity for the prisoner class to support a paper dedicated to revolutionary education and liberation while protesting and resisting Keefe and similar corporations dedicated to exploitation and the perpetuation of the prison industrial (slave) complex.

This is an opportunity for the prisoner class to support a paper dedicated to revolutionary education and liberation while protesting and resisting Keefe and similar corporations dedicated to exploitation and the perpetuation of the prison industrial (slave) complex.

Like most of you inside the belly of the beast, I felt the transformative power and inspiration of the Bay View when I received my first issue back in December 2012. Many of us will agree that no other publication compares to the Bay View. It speaks to our pain, suffering, despair, hopelessness and resilience as an oppressed, imprisoned class.

We cannot and should not allow this vital revolutionary print publication to struggle and fail. The Bay View, which has kept many of us sane, mentally stimulated and engaged in the struggle while trapped inside our concrete tombs, belongs to all of us. Now it is our time to go hard for the Bay View. This January, donate $5 in stamps or a money order or institutional check payable to the Bay View.

Send our brother some love and light: Uhuru Baraka-Rowe, 1131545, Buckingham Correctional Center, P.O. Box 430, Dillwyn, VA 23936. Typed by Adrian McKinney. Edited by Tynan Krakoff. The Bay View sends our profound gratitude for this unsolicited support from Uhuru Baraka-Rowe.